Quote Discussion, Current quote: “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”
page 4

Pon
Well, your answer to MY post. :D
“No. To me, anothers life is a different value to me. My life is a different value to them. Prices are not universal, and one thing sells for more or less than another.

And just because it is said does not make it true. You may be nice all your life and end up trodden into the dirt, felled by your own disliking for resistance.

Well, there is hardly any reason to hurt yourself, is there now? Everyone does good for themselves, deep in their mnids. It pleasures them. It saves them from karmic resurgence. If you didn’t enjoy doing good, in any way at all, I don’t think you’d do it."

Like YOU said, if everyone considered EVERYONE’s “everything” as his/her OWN, than no one would ever “take what it’s not his/her”, cause it would work in reverse.

Btw, in case you don’t know (I’m pretty sure), a famous Jewish saying is: “Don’t do to another, what you don’t want to be done to you”.

The problem is, people do “good” for themselves-

No. To me, anothers life is a different value to me. My life is a different value to them. Prices are not universal, and one thing sells for more or less than another.

And just because it is said does not make it true. You may be nice all your life and end up trodden into the dirt, felled by your own disliking for resistance.

Well, there is hardly any reason to hurt yourself, is there now? Everyone does good for themselves, deep in their mnids. It pleasures them. It saves them from karmic resurgence. If you didn’t enjoy doing good, in any way at all, I don’t think you’d do it.

I have similar stance but I tend to say that there are times when God directly interferes to solve some problems, such as lucky coincidences when my aunt’s town was in a storm, some other people’s roofs were taken by the wind but hers were kept on, even though some parts of it were taken away as well, but mostly they’re on.

But why attribute this to god? Why not aerodynamics, structural integrity, or just the circumstances? Why a deity who’s existance is uncertain, that you have no proof of?

I never said religion was a particularly bad justificative. Althought, once you asked, it might be bad BECAUSE, historically speaking, it is the most effective. Most people, if they see X as the will of a deity, will automatically consider it right, without the need of much more convincing. Sure, such people probably arent as intelligent as you and I, and both of us could point loads of plot holes in these kinds of arguments. But, as I said, WE can: THEY, cant.

As for the value of human life: Maybe, but it doesnt matter how much the life of someone else would mean to you. It doesnt matter if this one life means crap for you, as what matters, is how much his life means, TO HIM. HE will be the one who will be losing the life, a life that belongs to HIM, therefore why should one use the value YOU give to his life, as a basis of comparisson whether you should or should not save him? If you want my opinion on it, that seems like a serious case of lack of empathy here…

You seemed to be implicating it. And so you accept that this deity, if it’s will is not always “Right” is therefore fallible? And “If you talk sense to a fool, he will call you foolish” -Euripides, so poking wholes in their arguments is pointless at best.

But what motive would I have for caring what happens to him or her? You are confusing the price with the value, for the price to willingly sell my life is incredibly high, but the price for me to buy (Take.) another’s, not so much. You say this is about “Compassion and empathy”, basic human social instincts. You place such a huge value on these instincts. It is not intelligent to assign such importance to a mere instinct. And you will doubtless go on about my lack of empathy soon, but as I have said, aimless empathy is not intelligent.

One can disagree with some ideas of a teacher, but still respect him and see it as a friend. Besides, it is often not so much a matter of agreeing with God will, but agreeing with what someone else claims to be God will. BELIEVE me, there is a huge difference…

What you call two instincts I, as you said, put too much value upon, I call the only twothings that stop our society from crumbling. Have you ever stopped to notice the fact that, if nobody cared to what happens to somebody else, if nobody had the ability to place itself on somebody else skin, our society would be reduced to chaos? Why would a mother bother to take care of its child? It would be better to just throw it in the trash. Why would I bother to buy, if it is so much easier to kill the seller and take it?

Aaaaaaaaand you still didnt said why am I irrational. At least, more then you, that is. Like it or not, we both have the same objective: Being happy. However, while you act basing only on your immediate happiness, I prefer to act by creating a world on which happiness is possible. Yes, I admit that making others happy, even if it does not translate in a direct, physical gain to me, DO makes me happy, yes. I admit that part of the reason I refuse to commit crimes or sim, is because it would cause me immense pain. What means that, in that case, at least to me, THIS would be the irrational choice. Tell me something: Why should I do something that will bring me pain?

I was clearly speaking about an IDEAL situation, how it SHOULD be.
You just said, how it IS NOW…

I still don’t see how this correlates into my post… you are throughly mystifying me.

That’s how I define life, as initiated. Therefore our initiator is alive and one.

Then why do you assume that the christian deity is the initiator, and not another?

One can disagree with some ideas of a teacher, but still respect him and see it as a friend. Besides, it is often not so much a matter of agreeing with God will, but agreeing with what someone else claims to be God will. BELIEVE me, there is a huge difference…

What you call two instincts I, as you said, put too much value upon, I call the only twothings that stop our society from crumbling. Have you ever stopped to notice the fact that, if nobody cared to what happens to somebody else, if nobody had the ability to place itself on somebody else skin, our society would be reduced to chaos? Why would a mother bother to take care of its child? It would be better to just throw it in the trash. Why would I bother to buy, if it is so much easier to kill the seller and take it?

Aaaaaaaaand you still didnt said why am I irrational. At least, more then you, that is. Like it or not, we both have the same objective: Being happy. However, while you act basing only on your immediate happiness, I prefer to act by creating a world on which happiness is possible. Yes, I admit that making others happy, even if it does not translate in a direct, physical gain to me, DO makes me happy, yes. I admit that part of the reason I refuse to commit crimes or sim, is because it would cause me immense pain. What means that, in that case, at least to me, THIS would be the irrational choice. Tell me something: Why should I do something that will bring me pain?

I did not say you had to dislike it. But still, that does seem like he can be fallible. Why does your god, if he is infallible, simply not just make his words clear and no-nonsense, so people won’t misunderstand him?

So? Society is another instinct. These instincts help me to happiness when they are on others. Society can afford a few deviants, and it is in my insterests to be one of these. I like how most humans make society out of “Compassion and empathy”, but it is foolish to apply this to myself, because deviance in this society wil lgain me much more. And it would be. Abortions do happen, you know. And why should the mother care? Let her have her happiness, if you care so much for the happiness of others. And why not? It is much more rational. The only thing stopping that happening is the retribution from others. You must look to the future. People will hunt you down for this act. I would be fine taking, if it was not for retribution. It is no moral thing. It is a logical thing. You must look to the future to determine your longtime happiness.

Wrong. I look to the future, as I said. But it annoys me greatly that most people have to fool themselves with assorted religions and morals to do this. Why can’t you just build tomorrow to be better in the interests of being happier later? The intelligent look to the future as much as today. My lack of empathy and compassion means I do not care for making others happy. The fact that seeing people unhappy DOESN’T make me happy means I do not seek to harm them. I will help or harm another as the situation demands so that, at some point, it will benefit me. And the physical gain you claim you don’t have is a release of dopamine in your brain. I’ve looked into it. It is what makes you happy, and while your morals grant you that happiness, they forbid you the pleasures they see as “Immoral”. So yes, it is practical to you as you are now. But you can change yourself, abandon this, and likely experience even more pleasure. I do not advocate being you immoral to hurt you. I advocate you abandon these moral shackles and free yourself, allowing you to have more pleasure.

Then why do you assume that the christian deity is the initiator, and not another?

I’m not strong being put in this position, honestly, one factor could be because Christianity has been adopted by my family. But after thinking about it I found rest in it personally. So, to reason why other religion is not as qualified as mine, I’m not an expert in other religions. But in my own reasoning which I’m not willing to share entirely with everybody, I found rest quite reliably in Jesus.

I was clearly speaking about an IDEAL situation, how it SHOULD be.
You just said, how it IS NOW…

I still don’t see how this correlates into my post… you are throughly mystifying me.

That’s how I define life, as initiated. Therefore our initiator is alive and one.

Then why do you assume that the christian deity is the initiator, and not another?

One can disagree with some ideas of a teacher, but still respect him and see it as a friend. Besides, it is often not so much a matter of agreeing with God will, but agreeing with what someone else claims to be God will. BELIEVE me, there is a huge difference…

What you call two instincts I, as you said, put too much value upon, I call the only twothings that stop our society from crumbling. Have you ever stopped to notice the fact that, if nobody cared to what happens to somebody else, if nobody had the ability to place itself on somebody else skin, our society would be reduced to chaos? Why would a mother bother to take care of its child? It would be better to just throw it in the trash. Why would I bother to buy, if it is so much easier to kill the seller and take it?

Aaaaaaaaand you still didnt said why am I irrational. At least, more then you, that is. Like it or not, we both have the same objective: Being happy. However, while you act basing only on your immediate happiness, I prefer to act by creating a world on which happiness is possible. Yes, I admit that making others happy, even if it does not translate in a direct, physical gain to me, DO makes me happy, yes. I admit that part of the reason I refuse to commit crimes or sim, is because it would cause me immense pain. What means that, in that case, at least to me, THIS would be the irrational choice. Tell me something: Why should I do something that will bring me pain?

I did not say you had to dislike it. But still, that does seem like he can be fallible. Why does your god, if he is infallible, simply not just make his words clear and no-nonsense, so people won’t misunderstand him?

So? Society is another instinct. These instincts help me to happiness when they are on others. Society can afford a few deviants, and it is in my insterests to be one of these. I like how most humans make society out of “Compassion and empathy”, but it is foolish to apply this to myself, because deviance in this society wil lgain me much more. And it would be. Abortions do happen, you know. And why should the mother care? Let her have her happiness, if you care so much for the happiness of others. And why not? It is much more rational. The only thing stopping that happening is the retribution from others. You must look to the future. People will hunt you down for this act. I would be fine taking, if it was not for retribution. It is no moral thing. It is a logical thing. You must look to the future to determine your longtime happiness.

Wrong. I look to the future, as I said. But it annoys me greatly that most people have to fool themselves with assorted religions and morals to do this. Why can’t you just build tomorrow to be better in the interests of being happier later? The intelligent look to the future as much as today. My lack of empathy and compassion means I do not care for making others happy. The fact that seeing people unhappy DOESN’T make me happy means I do not seek to harm them. I will help or harm another so that, at some point, it will benefit me. And the physical gain you claim you don’t have is a release of dopamine in your brain. I’ve looked into it. It is what makes you happy, and while your mroals grant you that happiness, they forbid you the pleasures they see as “Immoral”. So yes, it is practical to you as you are now. But you can change yourself, abandon this, and likely experience even more pleasure. I do not advocate being you immoral to hurt you. I advocate you abandon these mroal shackles and free yourself, allowing you to have more pleasure.

I was not talking about psycological pleasure when I was talking about a physical gain, but a actual, solid, immediate improval in my own living conditions. AS for why would he have being purposefully ambiguous, well… If you are talking about the Bible:
A: I do not believe in the Bible, as I believe it to have been written by man, not God. In fact, I am not even Christian, in the sense I dont believe Jesus to be the son of God. A messager maybe, but not the son.
B: Maybe he never meant us to know his will. Maybe, he never even meant us to know about his existance at all. Maybe he believed that knowing his existance would cause us to try to be good, not because we believe it is the right thing to do, but to fall on His grace. Maybe he even allowed people totwist his words, only because he knew those who were truly faithfull wouldnt fall for it. However, who am I to claim I know his will? I am only saiyng my opinion on it…

Even assuming I can change myself, why on Earth would I try to do that? You claim that I will be releasing myself of shackles and having even more pleasure, but again, it seems that you completely missed my point. I do not WANT to free myself of my morals, for they are what make me what I am. Besides, if may I ask, what is even your objective triyng to free me of my morals? If you do not seek my happiness, and, if you truly is as unable to feel empathy as you claim to be, you dont, then why would you want me to experience such greater pleasures? AS far as you care, I would be better as the little saint who doesnt hurt anyone, right?

I’m not strong being put in this position, honestly, one factor could be because Christianity has been adopted by my family. But after thinking about it I found rest in it personally. So, to reason why other religion is not as qualified as mine, I’m not an expert in other religions. But in my own reasoning which I’m not willing to share entirely with everybody, I found rest quite reliably in Jesus.

Ask Jesus to reveal himself to you, he said ask and you shall receive. I hope He’ll reveal himself to you.

So, you accept your religion not because you believe it is true, but because it makes you “Find rest”. I speak of finding the truth, not a lie that makes you feel good, such as a magician or trickster may spin.

I was not talking about psycological pleasure when I was talking about a physical gain, but a actual, solid, immediate improval in my own living conditions. AS for why would he have being purposefully ambiguous, well… If you are talking about the Bible:
A: I do not believe in the Bible, as I believe it to have been written by man, not God. In fact, I am not even Christian, in the sense I dont believe Jesus to be the son of God. A messager maybe, but not the son.
B: Maybe he never meant us to know his will. Maybe, he never even meant us to know about his existance at all. Maybe he believed that knowing his existance would cause us to try to be good, not because we believe it is the right thing to do, but to fall on His grace. Maybe he even allowed people totwist his words, only because he knew those who were truly faithfull wouldnt fall for it. However, who am I to claim I know his will? I am only saiyng my opinion on it…

Even assuming I can change myself, why on Earth would I try to do that? You claim that I will be releasing myself of shackles and having even more pleasure, but again, it seems that you completely missed my point. I do not WANT to free myself of my morals, for they are what make me what I am. Besides, if may I ask, what is even your objective triyng to free me of my morals? If you do not seek my happiness, and, if you truly is as unable to feel empathy as you claim to be, you dont, then why would you want me to experience such greater pleasures? AS far as you care, I would be better as the little saint who doesnt hurt anyone, right?

But happiness is an increase in good living conditions. There is no point in living in a mansion if you are unhappy, but there is reason to live in a slum for your happiness. And for A, I agree with you there. And for B, why would he or she not just make sure we don’t know of him at all then? Act as a karmic force? It is the most practical plan, saving the truely virtuitous and stopping the damned. Which, in that case, would eithier mean humans made up the current idea of God themselves, and the real god they know nothing of, or he doesn’t exist to make that decision.

Yes, I know you don’t want to. I just think you might feel differently about it if you do. Morals don’t make you who you are. They just bend who you are and hold you differently then you would yourself, as who you truely are. And I’m trying to get you to do this out of boredom, honestly. I didn’t enter into this discussion to spread my beliefs for the sake of them, I entered into this discussion to interest myself. And if I managed to get you to change your morals while doing this, that would be a most interesting result, because I’ve never done it before and want to see what happens. To cut that really short and simple, I’m doing it for the lulz.

@JohnnyBeGood
You wrote that religion’s standards of good is tied with the idea of Hell. I’m just balancing the focus that its not what religion is all about.

No i did not. Dartval made the claim that the threat of Hell is used to make people do good.

As answer to that. I pointed out that this “good” is subjective. It depends on the definition of good that goes with the threat, so it can just as easily define “good” as mass murdering non-believers, stoning gays and women who were raped, torturing and putting burning a live people who disagree with the way “good” is defined and etc..

@JohnnyBeGood
You’re not to just do good because of Hell, you do good because you love to do good.

Whats that have to do with what i wrote and the Topic at hand?

Current quote:
“Hell does not exist to punish sinners. Hell exists to ensure that no one sins.”

-Jun’ya Ota (aka ZUN)

For you i would add another quote:

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

-Steven Weinberg

Personally i would replace religion with ideology(which religion commonly is a from of).

I have to disagree with that quote here… Mostly, people who do bad things in name of religion would be doing bad things anyway. They are just using religion as a mean to morally justify thei actions…

Thats not really disagreeing. Its just saying that the last sentence does not happen so often and just reinforces the second sentence.
Since you would need some good reasons for the statement: mostly, people who do good things in name of religion would be doing good things anyway. They are just accrediting their actions to religion. not to be equally true. Basically you are evaluating religious motivation to be secondary and less significant than other motivation factors and thus less significant to the lives of people then other things.

I think jail is enough to deter people from committing “sins,” and that fear of eternal torture is unnecessary if Yahweh exists.

Imagine there is no God, no Heaven, no Hell; there is just a finite lifetime. Assume the standard of living is lower in jail than it would be if one was not in jail. If one murders, rapes, steals, infringes on someone else’s rights, etc. they are placed jail. If people are secular and sane, they would tend not to want to go to jail, and would tend to refrain from the abovementioned sins. So, wouldn’t one think that jail would be enough to deter people away from the major “sins” that I have listed above?

That being said, I feel like people, from personal experience, are keen on thinking and hoping that they are going to go to Heaven as a means of keeping sane. Hell is especially unnecessary in that certain Christian sects simply advocate believing and “accepting Jesus” as a means of achieving salvation (not necessarily good works, the stress is placed on acceptance of Jesus a lot of the time). If the concept works (which I don’t think it does), it certainly doesn’t in application to the real world.

@JohnnyBeGood
You wrote that religion’s standards of good is tied with the idea of Hell. I’m just balancing the focus that its not what religion is all about.

No i did not. Dartval made the claim that the threat of Hell is used to make people do good.

As answer to that. I pointed out that this “good” is subjective. It depends on the definition of good that goes with the threat, so it can just as easily define “good” as mass murdering non-believers, stoning gays and women who were raped, torturing and putting burning a live people who disagree with the way “good” is defined and etc..

But isn’t that the perception of non-believers on religion? that they cause people to do these things? What’s your believe? Tell me that that wasn’t your opinion when you wrote this.

I think jail is enough to deter people from committing “sins,” and that fear of eternal torture is unnecessary if Yahweh exists.

Imagine there is no God, no Heaven, no Hell; there is just a finite lifetime. Assume the standard of living is lower in jail than it would be if one was not in jail. If one murders, rapes, steals, infringes on someone else’s rights, etc. they are placed jail. If people are secular and sane, they would tend not to want to go to jail, and would tend to refrain from the abovementioned sins. So, wouldn’t one think that jail would be enough to deter people away from the major “sins” that I have listed above?

That being said, I feel like people, from personal experience, are keen on thinking and hoping that they are going to go to Heaven as a means of keeping sane. Hell is especially unnecessary in that certain Christian sects simply advocate believing and “accepting Jesus” as a means of achieving salvation (not necessarily good works, the stress is placed on acceptance of Jesus a lot of the time). If the concept works (which I don’t think it does), it certainly doesn’t in application to the real world.

I’m a Christian and I think there could be a problem with your idea if people who are already immoral in the beginning ended up establishing permanent personality or permanen inclination to do evil things. That all they see when faced with lovely laws is to mess with it. Maybe there’s a point where it’s so embodied in your identity it became inseparable from a human… therefore that evil is only what makes him / her himself/herself.
Therefore somewhere in the future, it became necessary to separate the people from the community that’s increasingly became stronger-and stronger, that’s increasingly abundant in terms of private property. You can’t have these evil people took part in the community like that it would facilitate them to destroy the world. Look at our society now… they gave role to people who don’t care about helping, and more about money, look at what it had become.
Then just like software, everytime this society created something new, they must include in the procedure the way to avoid or the antivirus against evil. These evil people would experience constant purging, constant disintegration, which is fire that will burn them forever.

@JohnnyBeGood
You wrote that religion’s standards of good is tied with the idea of Hell. I’m just balancing the focus that its not what religion is all about.

No i did not. Dartval made the claim that the threat of Hell is used to make people do good.

As answer to that. I pointed out that this “good” is subjective. It depends on the definition of good that goes with the threat, so it can just as easily define “good” as mass murdering non-believers, stoning gays and women who were raped, torturing and putting burning a live people who disagree with the way “good” is defined and etc..

But isn’t that the perception of non-believers on religion? that they cause people to do these things? What’s your believe? Tell me that that wasn’t your opinion when you wrote this.

I don´t understand. Its not very clear what your trying to say. Quite frankly most people think Religion causes people to do bad things. This includes believers and non-believers alike. Just that believers very often except their own religion from being the cause for such bad things. Mostly by claiming their religion is not about doing such bad things or by claiming/believing that their belief is true(unlike others) and thus the bad things are not bad but good(because god said so).

Personally i have the stance that religion is a possible cause, since religion usually includes a variable and inconsistent moral system with very poor reasoning behind it. And these inconsistent moral systems with poor reasoning can lead followers to do stuff i would consider bad.(like hating upon Gays)
Still its not the only cause out there and since religious morals are ultimately man made(at least from my perceptive) its obvious that people can have the same morals that make them do bad stuff without religion(they just can´t say god told me so, so it has to be true/right).

I think that the concept of Hell helps people be “good”. It doesn’t work for everyone, but people who sincerely believe in a good and bad afterlife are motivated by this belief to be good people.

But only “good” People as the moral-system they connect with Hell dictates them to be. Which as such moral-system are subjective and far from perfect, means the system can also produce quite a number of “good” mass murderers, torturers and just plain assholes.

I agree that such moral system is not perfect, that’s why religious people are to work not to be lazy, they are to work to create their own moral system relevant to their knowledge and time inspired by teachings from religion.
Edit: not perfect in terms of user friendly ness and its association to popular culture.

@JohnnyBeGood
However after I think about it I can’t deny that the problem with moral system from religion is, many religions claimed that theirs is the divine and the most important, when it clashed, things got ugly.

That depends, really.
A pleasant illusion is better than a harsh reality.

Living a lie is not living. You just live in that person’s lie, part of it, a creature and slave to it, a mere mimicry of what spouts from their mouth. Lies are death, truth is resurrection. Even ignorance of your own making is just a pale ghost of life, but it will make do. Better a ghost than the deadliness of a lie.

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” ~Oscar Wilde

Living a lie is not living. You just live in that person’s lie, part of it, a creature and slave to it, a mere mimicry of what spouts from their mouth. Lies are death, truth is resurrection. Even ignorance of your own making is just a pale ghost of life, but it will make do. Better a ghost than the deadliness of a lie.

Yes, you see the truth, your outlook on life is true and virtuous. You understand everything. You know exactly how not to be deceived, of course…

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